Before Israeli independence, the United Nations General Assembly adopted the “Partition Resolution.” This resolution sought to divide the formerly British-controlled Palestine into Jewish and Arab states (Megawati & Hasarrudin, 2019). The Palestinian Arabs completely refused to recognize the Partition Resolution, claiming that the arrangement was only favorable to the Jews (Gelber, 2018). According to them, the Arabs that would remain in the proposed Jewish territory would be mistreated (Megawati and Hasaruddin, 2019). As such, they fought to prevent the establishment of Jewish states. On the other hand, the Jews fought the Palestinian Arabs to control the area allotted to them by the United Nations General Assembly (Gelber, 2018). This conflict escalated after Israel declared its independence in 1948.
Terrorism is deliberate violence directed towards civilians and is politically motivated. Hence, terrorism aims to achieve political goals (Kapitan, 2004). The perpetrators of terrorism are individuals or groups. As such, states and governments cannot be agents of terrorism. Therefore, Jewish actions during this conflict cannot be categorized as terrorist acts since they had been declared independent from Britain. Self-defense, on the other hand, is provided for in the United Nations Charter. The charter allows for the use of force provided it is necessary and imminent. Given that the Arabs initiated the conflict, it was necessary and imminent for the Jews to defend their allotted land.
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Israeli military actions against people in the West Bank, Gaza Strip, and surrounding Arab countries are not state-sponsored terrorism. For the actions to be regarded as such, the Israeli government needs to have facilitated individual terrorists or terrorist groups (Kapitan, 2004). However, the actions were committed by the Israeli military on behalf of the government. A government cannot be recognized as a terrorist agent. Additionally, these actions were conducted during an active armed conflict between Israeli and Palestine (Teitelbaum & Kostiner, 2019). As such, military action by the Israeli military would be categorized under combatant actions. Any harm caused to the civilians during this time would be regarded as a violation of humanitarian law and not an act of terrorism.
References
Gelber, Y. (2018). Why there is no solution to the Palestinian Arab-Jewish conflict. Israel Studies , 23 (3), 237. https://doi.org/10.2979/israelstudies.23.3.28
Kapitan, T. (2004). Terrorism in the Arab-Israeli Conflict. In Terrorism (pp. 175-191). Northern Illinois University. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230204546_13
Megawati, L., & Hasaruddin, H. (2019). Jews in Europe and the beginning of arab-Jewish conflicts. JICSA (Journal of Islamic Civilization in Southeast Asia) , 8 (2). https://doi.org/10.24252/jicsa.v8i2.12007
Teitelbaum, J., & Kostiner, J. (2019). The West Bank and Gaza: The PLO and the intifada. Revolutions of the Late Twentieth Century , 298-323. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429304767-13
